New Year
by vitt1977
Summary: A doctor, defense attorney, and ADA are gunned down on the steps of the downtown courthouse. Eames is pregnant and considers telling her family that Goren's the father though he's not. Goren's still recovering from his Untethered ordeal. Excitement ensues
1. New Year's Day

**AN(s)**: Here we go again: the usual "characters aren't mine" disclaimers apply. The events that take place in the following story are not events I'd _actually_ like to see take place on the show, but rather just my playing around with the "what could be"s. Yeah, romance ahead in the distance. The ship's gonna sail.

"You owe me a danish" comes from my little Christmas tale "Cheese Danish," but otherwise nothing from my other stories is carried over. This one's its own beast.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

In the backyard of a Long Island home, two women in their forties giggled like teenagers.

It was New Year's Day, an hour from sunrise. The ground was covered with frozen-over snow. Mary Eames and Laura Eames-Wozniek, sisters-in-law, were drunk, but not nearly as drunk as Alex was.

Alex had brought home a man from the party. And she'd brought him home to her _parents_' house, where the family traditionally had brunch together on New Year's Day. They'd just met hours before. He had some sort of accent – Swiss, Laura thought she'd heard her sister say – and he'd kissed Alex dramatically at midnight. Before the rest of their group could even get in the door, Alex and date had run upstairs, pressing each other to keep silent.

"Hey, Mary?" Laura said, slurring the words together. "You definitely, most certainly _do not_ owe me a danish tonight."

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Alex woke up in the bedroom she'd once shared with Laura and stared first at the clock – 9:30AM – and then at the man next to her.

"Good morning," he said in a strong French – no, no, Swiss, she remembered – accent.

"I thought you had a flight to catch back to Switzerland."

"I decided to linger awhile. There's another this afternoon."

Alex sighed. "Well, don't. You can't linger. This is my parents' house."

"You're asking me to go?"

"It was fun –"

"Willem." He bit his lip and slowly lifted the covers.

"Willem, I'm sorry. You were going to go back home and never speak to me again anyway, so let's just make this as easy as possible."

He brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. "It was very nice meeting you, Alexandra." Why did this stranger look so concerned?

"Try to make sure nobody sees you on the way out." She paused for a momemnt. "I mean, because my parents, nephews, and nieces are all hanging around."

He put on his clothes from the night before, picked up a bag of ridiculous party favors they'd – won? she vaguely remembered – and then stooped to kiss her forehead.

"Nice meeting you too, Willem," she said.


	2. Bounded In a Nutshell

_February 1__st_

The bad dreams, lately, had replaced themselves with better ones. But they were still ultimately about Frank, and so they woke him up every few hours.

These were not dreams he could share with his NYPD-salaried shrink.

This time, Alex was in a black nightie so short it almost didn't cover her thighs at all. He had her up against a motel room dresser. They said nothing to each other, just thrusted, and grunted, and shouted together.

Goren woke up in an ice cold sweat, shivering beneath his blankets. He was half-lost man with no one to turn to, half-thirteen year old boy.

But at least the bad dreams were less frequent. At least now he could sleep for almost four hours at a time.

At least he had his job back, finally.

Had his meth-addict big brother been astutely observant, or was Goren himself crazy with grief again? Were there 'frustrations' to be worked out?

Never, Goren reminded himself. Never, never, never.

**oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo**

Eames woke up suddenly at two o'clock in the morning. It took her a moment to realize that she'd been sleeping on the fold-out sofabed in Laura and Tim's living room.

She and Laura had lost track of the time, and since she (secretly, at least to most people) had been afraid to go home by herself after midnight ever since the Gage incident, Laura invited her to stay until morning.

The day before, she'd taken a home pregnancy test that turned out_ positive_. Positive, even though she was on the Pill and her New Year's date had used a condom. _Positive_, even so.

Laura emerged from the kitchen. "Couldn't sleep either?" Alex asked.

"Still don't know?" was her response.

"I think I do. This is a chance, maybe, for me to have a baby."

"You were thinking about having a baby before this?"

"I put Joe off for so long, and then towards the end, I decided that, yes, I was finally ready, and then, y'know, he had to go and die on me …"

"Stop it with the sarcasm, Alex. This is a serious decision on your part."

She stretched a hand across her stomach. "Would you slap me if I said I envy you for being born without a uterus?"

"I might, honey, if you hadn't been nice enough to let me borrow yours."

"What I'm worried about is … I don't even know the father's last name. What about his family history? Look at Bobby, my partner. Everyone in his family – I mean, _everyone_ – they have problems like you wouldn't believe. And besides, it's not fair to this guy Willem that he might never know he has a kid."

Laura sat on the bed with her sister and rubbed her arm. "And," Alex continued, "I hope I don't sound too much like a sixteen year-old girl, but I'm embarrassed. How do I explain to Mom and Dad that I met the father an hour before midnight on New Year's Eve, and he was gone by ten A.M.?"

"Tell Dad that Bobby's the father," Laura answered, hopefully half-joking.

"Bobby's still not doing too well."

"No?"

"They_tortured_ him. I know what it's like to be stuck with nightmares, but he doesn't have anybody to go to. You guys took care of me when I got out of the hospital. I worry about him."

Laura held her sister's hand and made her promise that no matter what, she'd take care of herself and the baby, not Bobby Goren, first.


	3. At Last, It's a Crime!

_Early March_

"Have you told _him_ yet?" Ross asked.

"I will in a couple of minutes," Eames said. "I just thought you should know, based on last time, he might act a little … strange … with his temporary partner."

"Deakins told me that he and Bishop worked pretty well together."

"Well, she's with the Feds now and Goren isn't in as good – shape – as he used to be.

"I hadn't noticed," Ross quipped.

"We'll figure it out in the next couple of months," she said. "Obviously, I'm going to have to put in for a more extensive maternity leave this time …"

"We'll do what we can by you," Ross promised.

One man-in-her-life down, two to go: Bobby and her father.

"Let's take a walk," she said to Goren as she passed by his desk.

"Okay," he said, somewhat meekly. He was still complying with Ross's orders and visiting a department shrink once a week, but ever since he'd returned from his month-long suspension, he hadn't been himself.

Which was okay, because she hadn't quite been herself since she'd learned she was pregnant.

They went outside and sat on a bench near One Police Plaza. "Do you think you'll be able to deal with a new partner for a few months this fall?" she asked gently.

"You're a great sister, Eames," he said, smiling a bit. He must have figured out that she was pregnant, but didn't know the circumstances.

"It's not Laura's this time. It's mine."

Now he seemed surprised. "You're – it's your baby?" His left hand smacked into the bench. "Well."

"Bobby," she warned.

"No, I'm happy for you, if this is what you want."

"I'm going to be a mother."

"You'll – you'll come back, though?" he stammered.

She laid a hand on his arm. "I promise."

That was all he needed.

They stood up quickly when they saw ten officers run out of the building, one after another. "Something's up," Goren said.

"Good work, detective," Eames teased.

Ross was the next person out the door. "Detectives, you're needed at the downtown courthouse. There's been a shooting."

"Who?" Goren asked.

"The doctor and the defense attorney from the Hale trial, _and_ the prosecuting ADA."

Goren and Eames hurried over to the courthouse and forced their way through a growing crowd. The police on the scene had already ordered everyone out of the courthouse and away from the steps and CSU was collecting possible evidence.

Dr. Lawrence Hale and his attorney, Danielle Melnick, lay sprawled out on the steps with rather precise bullet holes in their heads.

The Hale case had been a regular _Daily News_ / _Post_ cover story since the summer. Dr. Hale had been brought in to a downstate prison to treat Sam Colacci, a former mob boss who had been behind bars since the late 1970s. Colacci, suffering from Alzheimer's, requested Hale, his personal physician. The prison complied and, weeks before Colacci was supposed to go before the parole board, Hale had euthanized him, supposedly at the prisoner's own request.

Special Victims prosecutor Casey Novak, who was often assigned cases involving the elderly but rarely the imprisoned elderly, was prosecuting Hale.

"Okay, what about the third victim?" Goren asked an officer.

"ADA Casey Novak," he said. "Witnesses saw a lady with a handgun. Took out a good chunk of the victim's shoulder. They rushed her right off to the hospital."

"This," Eames said, kneeling down beside the two bodies, "obviously wasn't the work of a lady with a handgun."

"No," the offer said, pointing to an office building across the street. "We've got CSU canvassing up there."

Goren bent down to get a closer look at the wounds. "They were assassinated." He pressed his elbows into his knees and clenched his gloved hands. "Now, why would somebody else come up and shoot Novak?"

"Let me through," they heard a man's voice say. "I'm the DA, you have to let me through!"

Jack McCoy covered his mouth and let out a muffled cry when he saw Melnick's body. "Are you the detectives assigned to this case?" he asked.

"I'm Robert Goren, Major Case, and this is my partner, Alex Eames."

Oddly (Goren noticed), McCoy recoiled a bit. "What do you know so far?" he demanded.

"Nothing, right now. If you just wait for us, we'll talk to you once CSU is finished."

Eames stumbled a bit as she stood. Goren caught one of her arms in each of his hands. "You okay?" he asked softly.

"Yes, probably just my blood pressure going wild."

They joined CSU up on the roof across the street, where they found a few scratches on a ledge, but otherwise, the marks of a professional hitman: nothing. "What's going to matter to us," Goren said, "is how and why the hell Casey Novak was shot in the shoulder."

After Melnick's and Hale's bodies were carted off to the medical examiner's office, Goren and Eames met with Jack McCoy at City Hall. "You need to know that Danielle Melnick put herself at risk regularly because she believed the Bill of Rights was all this country had going for it," he told them. "She survived being shot before. I want you to do more than is humanly possible to find the person responsible for this."

Goren crossed his left leg over his right and shifted in his chair. "Mr. McCoy, tell us about your last conversation with ADA Novak."

He looked down at the stack of papers on his desk. "She said she had some new information that might really turn the Hale case on its head. We were supposed to meet after trial today."

"Do you have any idea what this information might have been?"

"No," McCoy said clearly, "not at all."

"All right, thank you, sir," he said, oddly deferent for Bobby Goren.

"What are you thinking?" Eames asked when they were back outside.

"Something Ross is not going to be pleased about."

"McCoy's hiding something?"

"He stopped to think before he told us Novak had information for him, as though he was trying to figure out the best way to phrase it first. Then when I asked him if he knew, he said no, clearly and confidently. Overconfidently."

"You know, he tried the Colacci case back in the seventies. My father was one of the detectives on it."

"That must be why McCoy flinched when I introduced you."

"Well," Eames said, "I have to talk to my father about a few other things, so …"

Goren's sad eyes – they were always sad, lately – fixed on her petite frame. "If there's anything you need, _anything_ –"

"Right now, we both need to figure out how we're going to deal with a political figure who's hiding something."

Goren nodded. "We'll talk to Novak as soon as her doctors let us."

"And then we'll see what my father has to say about Colacci."


	4. Jack McCoy

Jack McCoy leaned back in a chair he still didn't feel entirely comfortable in and sipped his scotch. The possibility of being responsible for another friend's death haunted him.

He took another sip.

In 1976, the Colacci case landed on his desk. Sam Colacci, a mid-level mob boss who was nevertheless responsible for a number of extortion-related crimes, had confessed to killing his associate Peter Lavin, along with Lavin's wife Belinda and their five children, ranging in age from eleven to six months. It was a brutal crime, the seven victims all shot to death inside their own Lower Manhattan home, most left to bleed to death for hours. The gun was never found. Colacci confessed within the first hour of interrogation.

Adam Schiff was confident that Jack, his young, talented ADA, would be able to put Colacci away. Colacci's lawyer insisted they go to trial despite the confession. McCoy saw his own name in the papers for the first time.

The_Daily News_ had been all over the husband-and-wife team prosecuting Colacci, especially because the office romance story and eight-months-pregnant Rachel McCoy made for some great human interest material.

"Good news," Jack told Rachel as they were getting ready to leave the office. "Colacci's lawyer called and set up a meeting for tomorrow. I heard 'deal' in his voice."

"And then we're free to take some time off to enjoy our child?" Rachel asked, patting her stomach.

"Adam gave it the okay, once we get this case wrapped up." He picked up his briefcase and heaved his shoulders.

"Jack," she said.

"Hm?"

"You'll be a good father, I promise."

"I'm not worried."

"Yes, you are, and I know why."

"Can we talk about something else, please?"

There was a knock at the door. John Eames, one of the detectives who had worked the case, stood outside the office.

"Not yet?" he joked, signaling towards Rachel.

"Soon," she said.

John set a file folder on the desk and folded his hands in front of him. "Look, counselors, I heard you were going to keep moving ahead with this case, and there's some information I think you should have." When neither McCoy moved, John picked up the file folder and stretched out his arm, offering it to Rachel.

Jack jumped in between them before Rachel could take the folder. "What is it?" he asked.

He didn't want to have to deal with any new information at this point because he _had_ to be there for his child's birth, he _had_ to be there for this kid. He wasn't going to start fatherhood off with hundreds of hours stuck in the office. It was imperative that he not screw this up.

Jack wrung his hands. "Detective Eames, what is it?"

John withdrew the folder from Jack and Rachel's reach. "We asked a couple of questions, and what do you know, there's a waitress near Battery Park who saw Peter Lavin come in to her restaurant a couple of times with Lucy Colacci, the daughter. And we have hospital records for Lucy that say –"

"So it's simply an alternate theory of the same crime. Colacci killed Lavin's family because he was enraged about something that happened to Lucy."

"No," John began, "see …"

"I am not about to reopen the investigation, Detective, when we have a confession from a mob boss who the mayor and DA have been trying to put away for years."

The next morning, Colacci accepted a deal for life with the possibility for parole after thirty years. Already in his mid-forties, he'd be elderly by the time he first saw the parole board. Schiff and the mayor were pleased, and Jack got to be around for the birth of his daughter.

A few weeks after Rebecca was born, Rachel decided not to go back to the DAs office. Some months later, she began working in private practice.

Jack never thought the Colacci case would come back to bite him this hard; he thought he'd done his penance, losing Rachel to the idealistic young legal aid attorney who would eventually become his daughter Rebecca's beloved stepfather, losing Rebecca for a long while because of her anger and disappointment over how he'd failed Claire Kincaid, losing over and over again because of one mistake, one decision.

And now he sat in a chair in which he was sure he didn't belong.


	5. She Did Right

Eames arrived early the next morning to find her partner still working at his desk, shuffling through documents and trying to make connections out of the unconnectable. It was comforting to see him at work, doing well, in a way.

"Did you know that McCoy and Novak had a falling out a couple of months ago?" Goren asked rhetorically. "She came close to being fired."

"You don't actually believe the district attorney had anything to do with a double murder."

"No, but I think Novak knows a few things about Hale – or maybe Colacci – that McCoy's not telling us."

"When can we talk to her?"

"At around noon. One of the doctors said they've been keeping her semi-sedated. She's in a lot of pain."

"You don't think she just got caught in the crossfire?"

"_What_ crossfire?" Goren pointed out. "Here's my theory: someone hired a hitman to take out Hale and Melnick, then realized at the last minute that Novak had similar information, and tried to do the job herself. The woman who shot Novak is the woman who put a hit out on Hale and his lawyer."

"Someone connected to the original Colacci case," Eames surmised. "Maybe Colacci had a lot to tell Hale during his last few days on earth."

Ross emerged from his office and joined the detectives. "Have you talked to Casey Novak yet?"

"In a few hours, when she's more lucid," Goren answered.

"We're working on a theory that whoever shot Novak ordered the hit." Lately, they made sure that Eames presented most if not all of their theories as her own.

"All right, check in with me afterwards," Ross said. "You know the mayor and the media are all over us to solve this one."

"What else is new?" Eames joked. She decided not to mention that they'd be talking to John Eames later that day; Ross would not be thrilled to find out that a member of her immediate family might play a significant part in their case.

Three hours later, they were allowed in to Casey Novak's hospital room.

Some months earlier, Goren had heard from a few SVU detectives he'd chatted up, Novak threw a case against a schizophrenic pedophile who'd temporarily blinded an NYPD detective. The NYPD and Novak's bosses were furious, but not quite ready to fire her because she was, otherwise, a talented prosecutor who had successfully put over a hundred sex offenders in prison.

The detective who had been blinded quietly told Goren why Novak had thrown the case. Goren couldn't help but empathize. One day soon, he knew, he'd be called into the M.E.'s office to identify Frank.

Novak's hospital bed was positioned so that she was sitting (or, perhaps, laying) upright, with her right arm wrapped in a cast from neckline to wrist. Three IVs were attached to veins in her left hand. Her eyes were glassy.

"Ms. Novak, we're Detectives Goren and Eames from Major Case." Eames slowly approached the bed. "Are you up to talking to us about what happened outside the courthouse?"

Novak breathed in sharply. Despite the IVs delivering painkillers directly into her bloodstream, she was in a lot of pain. "I didn't see who shot me, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Goren said. "You were facing away from the shooter. What were you looking at?"

"Hale and Melnick." She licked her lower lip as if to make sure it was still there. "They were probably looking for press to talk to. All of a sudden, Hale fell forward, on his face. Melnick, she went down on her knees first, and then fell forward too."

"Consistent with a shooter up on the roof," Eames told Goren.

"And then … I don't know … the pain was so bad that I passed out. I remember waking up and screaming my lungs out in the ambulance, that's it."

Goren nodded quickly. "What were you going to tell Mr. McCoy after the trial?"

Another shallow sigh. This one, Goren noted, was not the result of pain.

"I'd come across some new information that suggested Hale's intention wasn't to euthanize Colacci. If I had something more definite, I'd have had to drop the manslaughter charge and file murder one against him. A totally new theory of the crime."

"Murder one," Goren said, looking directly into Novak's eyes. "You think Hale was acting as a hired killer?"

"I went through our files on the original case and found that our detectives and attorneys accepted Colacci's confession a little too fast."

Eames wrinkled her forehead. "Because they'd been trying to put him away for assault, extortion, and a whole slew of other murders since the 1950s." She hoped her father wouldn't be implicated in this.

"Yes, it seems that Adam Schiff and the mayor may have jumped the gun." Novak closed her eyes and tried to suppress a whimper.

"We'll leave you so they can up your medication again," Goren said.

"Thank you. But … please let me talk to McCoy about this before you do. He's supposed to come visit later. I want to keep my job, Detectives. They're telling me I'll be in and out of the hospital having reconstructive surgery all year, and … I can't lose my job over this."

"We'll see what we can do," Goren promised as a nurse came in to sedate Novak again. "But we definitely need to look further into McCoy's prosecution of the original case."

"Okay, thank you," Novak whispered, writhing a bit under the covers. "I'm sorry I can't do more to help you. Maybe when I'm in better shape."

"Don't worry about it."

Eames flipped her notepad shut and picked up her bag. As they headed for the door, Novak began to blink and squint erratically. "I had to cut him off," she said, her tongue practically sticking to the roof of her mouth. "Please believe me. They tell you you _have_ to when … right?"

"Bobby, let's go," Eames said, pulling on his coat. "She's out of it."

He started to follow Eames out of the room, but then turned to face Novak again. "You did right," he told the ADA. "Get some rest. You did right."

"What was _that_?" Eames asked as they returned to the car.

"She was panicking. I didn't want her to panic. She seems like a good woman."

"Okay, then, next up: we talk to the only surviving original investigating detective."

"Um, do you want me to be there?"

"I'm not going to tell him about the baby _now_," she said, chuckling slightly as she started the car. "Unless, of course, you agree with my sister Laura that I should tell him the baby's yours."

The six-foot-five former sergeant in the passenger seat squirmed. "I'm kidding, Bobby," Eames said.

"I knew that." He smirked and showed a few teeth. "You know I knew that."


	6. The Prom Queen's Tale

Goren pressed his forehead into the passenger side window and tapped his left foot. "Colacci was supposed to go before the parole board last fall. If he was still in the early stages of Alzheimer's, maybe he wanted to spend his last few … lucid … months with his wife and kids and grandkids. He was ready to give up whoever he was protecting, and whoever that was paid Hale to "euthanize" him."

"And Hale was about to tell the truth?" Eames said.

"Explains why they got his lawyer, too."

"So we're looking for whoever was really responsible for the Lavin murders."

"I want to find Colacci's kids," Goren said. "It has to be one of the kids. You don't confess to seven murders and spend thirty years in jail for anybody but family."

He paused, folded his hands in his lap, pursed his lips, and fidgeted.

"You know it goes both ways, right?" Eames said. "If you ever need anything, I'm here."

"I have my very own NYPD shrink," he reminded her.

"Well, it's not like I'm asking you to lay your head down in my lap and weep."

"Too bad. I always wanted to lay my head down in a prom queen's lap."

Eames straightened her spine. _What_ in God's name had precipitated that comment? she wondered as she exited the LIE and turned right off the side road. "I'll give you five hundred dollars if you say that to my father," she said.

"Good." He leaned towards her. "A new tailored suit."

She pulled the SUV into a spot on a curved street about half a mile from the highway. "I missed you, Bobby," she teased.

John Eames was waiting for them at the door. He embraced his daughter and shook Goren's hand firmly. "Alex, you'll have to forgive me. I thought I had my notes from the case here, but they're with some of my old files downtown. I called in – I'll pick them up tomorrow morning."

"That's all right for now," she said. "Just tell us whatever you remember."

Goren and Eames sat down in the kitchen while John poured coffee. "Good job, Dad," Eames said, "finally learning how to work the coffee maker."

"Hey, I didn't want you kids haranguing me like you do with Johnny."

"My brother Johnny burns coffee," Eames explained to her partner.

John set a coffee cup down in front of Goren. "None for me, thanks," Eames said.

"You look like you could use a cup."

"I'm getting over a flu. The doctor said to cut back on caffeine for a few days."

"Right," John said, returning one cup to the shelf. "How about a glass of milk, for the baby?"

Eames cradled her head in her hands. "Jesus, Dad …"

"Laura told Tim. She swears she didn't mean to. I overheard Tim spilling the beans to Johnny last Sunday. You missed a great commotion that was all about you."

"Okay, Dad, we'll chat later."

"We'll_chat_?" he said. He placed a hand on Goren's shoulder. "You'd better watch your back. Alex's little brother has convinced himself that you're the father."

Eames struggled not to blush, because the Alex Eames who Bobby Goren knew didn't blush.

"We'll_talk later_," she muttered.

"I interrogated Laura this weekend. Even though I've got a basic idea about what happened – and I do worry about you in that respect – I'm happy for you."

"Thank you," she said reluctantly.

"Now," he said, sitting down next to his daughter, "back to matters not related to my eleventh grandchild."

"Good," she said, taking out a pen.

"You're going to want to tread lightly here, because the Manhattan DA's involved."

"We figured as much."

"Pagnotta and I, we knew right away something wasn't right about Colacci's confession."

"Pagnotta was his partner," Eames explained for Goren's benefit.

"Passed on eight years ago," John said. "He didn't know I took what I had to McCoy, though. See, we'd been trying to get Colacci for years. But he was a seasoned mob boss. You really think he'd let blood get on his hands like this? He was all about hired killers.

"So Pagnotta and I start looking into the Lavin murders again, but our captain tells us to stop, close the case. We had Colacci, we had him for life, and the Chief of Detectives and City Hall wanted it to be as open-and-shut as possible."

"But you kept investigating," Goren said.

"We did. Under the table, off the clock, but we kept looking. And what do you know, we found phone calls between Peter Lavin and Lucy Colacci, the daughter. We couldn't question her. Mrs. Colacci had already whisked her three kids off to Italy. But we did talk to a few of Lucy's friends from school – she was a high school senior at the time – and they told us they were worried about Lucy because she'd been bragging about being involved with a married man.

"Later on we found a nurse at a clinic uptown willing to 'waive' confidentiality since Lucy was no longer in the country, and she told us that Lucy had come in for a pregnancy test. She was pregnant, and then two months later, she was hospitalized after an assault. All we could get out of anybody at the hospital was 'assault.' So, connecting the dots, Lucy was pregnant with Lavin's baby and he sent somebody to make sure she wasn't anymore."

"You don't know that for sure, though," Eames said to her father.

"It's a pretty compelling explanation, enough for reasonable doubt at the very least."

"But how do you know Colacci wasn't just exacting revenge on the man who knocked up his daughter?"

"Like I said, he wouldn't get his own hands dirty. And his organization_never_ took it out on women and children."

"Hm." Eames looked down at her notepad. "So you told all this to the DA?"

"I figured the McCoys would want to know the truth," John said. "They were smart and idealistic … but Jack McCoy didn't want to hear any of it. He waved me away. Wouldn't even let me show him the file on Lucy."

"What about McCoy's wife?" Goren asked.

"I don't know. She was about to give birth. I sometimes wonder to this day if I broke up their marriage."

Eames looked over at Goren. "There must have been so much pressure on everyone to get Colacci …"

"The DA's office will be behind us all the way this time," Goren assured father and daughter. "McCoy's wracked with guilt. You could see it in his forehead, hands, even in his teeth when we talked to him last night."

"Good. I'll bring over Lucy's hospitalization record tomorrow."

"Thank you, Dad." Eames stood up and kissed the top of her father's head. "Where's Mom?"

"She's out having coffee with a few friends. Why don't you stay for dinner? I'm sure she wants to talk to you."

"She knows too? Damn, this family can't keep a secret." She smiled and patted John's shoulder, relieved that her parents weren't ashamed of their forty-one year-old daughter. "I can't stay, though. We have to check in with the captain."

"Detective Goren, it was good seeing you. Maybe you'll come by for Easter?"

"_Dad_," Eames said, suddenly feeing very much like a teenage prom queen again.

"Thank you, Detective Eames." Goren shook his hand before heading for the door.

"Call me John, please." Eames held her breath, preparing herself for whatever came next, but John just said goodbye and waved them off.

"So what's next?" Eames asked as she got back on the LIE.

"Next thing we have to do is find Lucy Colacci. Ten-to-one she was the middle-aged woman the witnesses saw shoot Novak."


	7. Sister

The next morning, Eames arrived to find Goren already questioning someone in the interview room, which indicated to her that he hadn't slept.

"Andrew Colacci, the oldest son," Ross explained when Eames asked who the tall silver-haired man in the black suit was. "Turns out he's been in the country since the mid-eighties, after he graduated from an Italian business school. He never came forward, didn't even show up for his father's funeral last summer."

"And Goren doesn't have him in interrogation?"

"Goren's not sure yet whether Andrew or Lucy ordered the hits. Either way, the guy's fiercely protective of his sister."

Goren signaled for Eames to come in. "Mr. Colacci, this is my partner, Detective Eames."

Andrew gritted his teeth. "I swear to you that my sister hasn't been back to the US since she was a teenager." He spoke with a general American accent; there was no hint of Italy or Brooklyn buried anywhere in his voice.

"Your father was already charged with and convicted of the crime," Eames said. "Our prosecutors would have a difficult time indicting Lucy."

"For the Lavin murders," Andrew said. "They'd have no problem getting her on Hale and his lawyer."

"Witnesses saw a woman shoot ADA Novak," Goren said, practically spitting the words out. Eames wasn't sure if he was just playing frustrated or if he was genuinely annoyed. "If you don't help us, the DA is going to have to charge both you and Lucy with conspiring to kill Hale. And Lucy's going to get brought up on attempted murder anyway. Where is she?"

"Switzerland," Andrew answered. "It couldn't have been her, detective. She's been in Lugano ever since my mother sent us to school there. My brother and I went back to Italy, and Lucy just … she didn't want to come back to live with us."

"When was the last time you saw your sister?" Eames asked.

"I don't know, it's been years. Not since I came back to the States."

Eames stood near Goren, who was hunched over, watching Andrew carefully as he constructed his answers. "What," Eames began, pacing a bit, "was Hale going to tell that jury?"

Andrew loosened his tie. "I swear I don't know. I've got a wife and kids. I try to keep my distance from anything having to do with my father."

"Well, then, Mr. Colacci, one more question," Goren said, resting his head on his left wrist so that he was looking up into Andrew's eyes. "What _could_ Hale have told that jury?"

"Well … now, I don't know why this would bother Lucy so much, considering she's in her late forties now, and it should all be behind her, but … your guys know why my father killed Lavin, right? It wasn't about business."

Eames stopped pacing and stood still in the corner. "You tell us what you know."

"Please don't let it get out. Maybe it's still a … rough spot … for her. But she – from what I've heard, she's a very reclusive, depressed woman. Dad killed Lavin because he was having an affair with Lucy." Andrew raised his eyebrows and swallowed hard, perhaps choking back tears. "Dad hated how his life affected us. Lavin got Lucy pregnant and threatened to kill her if she didn't have an abortion. She took the threat in stride, figuring that if she actually had the baby, Lavin would leave his wife and marry her. Pete Lavin sent one of his men – one of my _dad_'s guys – to beat the shit out of Lucy. She had a miscarriage, and, who knows … after that, she was gone. Never really all there again."

"Thank you, Mr. Colacci," Goren said, standing up. "I assume you already know that you need to stay where we can get in touch with you for the next couple of weeks."

"Of course."

Goren opened the door for Andrew and led him back to the elevators. "Detectives," he added, "my sister is not capable of something like this. She's not well, but …"

Goren placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "We'll call you," he said.

Eames turned to face Goren. "We can't hold him on anything, can we?"

Goren shook his head. "We've got to get to the hitman first," he muttered. "Colacci really is grieving for his sister's sanity."

"Affect?" Eames asked.

"He could have still ordered the hit. We've got to either find the hitman or Lucy."

"That'll be simple," Eames said, rolling her eyes. "Hold on." She reached for her cell phone.

"Alex, how are you feeling?" John asked.

"I thought you were stopping by today."

"I can't. In fact, you and Goren may want to take a drive out here today."

"Why?" Eames returned to her desk, Goren following close behind. She waved him away.

"The Chief of Ds' office confirmed for me today that I took the Colacci file with me when I retired. It was deemed irrelevant to the case, but I figured I might need it someday … Alex, I took a closer look downstairs, and it looks like the safe in my basement was broken into at some point."


	8. Too Close To Home

Eames sat on the steps that led to her parents' basement as Goren and a small CSU team took pictures and dusted for prints in and around the safe. "We aren't finding anything," one of the CSU officers said.

John shrugged. "How could someone have gotten in here? No one can fit through the little window in the laundry room."

Eames pressed the fingertips of one hand into her forehead. Without looking at anyone, she said, "you'll want to check the third bedroom on the left upstairs."

She scooted over so that the officers and Goren could get by, but remained seated. John sat with her. "Alex?"

"Please, Dad. Please don't ask."

"You let him in?" She shut her eyes and nodded. "He's your baby's father?"

"Yes … yes, I'm sorry. New Year's Eve, when Laura and Johnny and I went out together. I forget sometimes that my personal live and my work life are not as separate as I'd like them to be."

"Eames!" Goren shouted from upstairs, and father and daughter both turned around. Eames used the banister to prop herself up. "You coming?" she asked.

"I think maybe I'm better off not seeing what's up there."

John waited downstairs while his daughter went up to the bedroom she'd last slept in on January first. "The, um, sheets were changed, but there's a fairly intact handprint on the headboard," Goren said, making a fist and pointing towards the bed with his thumb.

"Good. Maybe Interpol can help us out with the prints."

"Can I talk to you in private?" Goren said, obviously embarrassed.

She brought him into an adjoining room, which was even more awkward, because the walls and dressers were decorated with pictures of the five Eames siblings, including a small one of Alex at the prom and a larger one from her wedding day.

He placed a hand on her arm. "I need you to describe him for me. What he looked like, any distinguishing features …"

"He was maybe a little under six feet tall, light brown hair, French-sounding accent, early forties …"

"French-sounding. So he's probably not originally from the same place in Switzerland where Lucy's living. But they must know each other. It's too much of a coincidence otherwise. We've got to find Lucy and have her extradited."

"He said his name was Willem. I remember he made a face when he introduced himself at the party, and again in the morning when he had to … reintroduce himself. I wonder if he realized he made a mistake – he might have given me his real first name."

She was surprised when Goren laid an open hand on her back and pushed her a little closer to him. "Either Lucy's running this whole operation from Switzerland by herself or she's using her brother as a middleman. I guess getting rid of your father's file on her wasn't enough."

"We should head back and fill Ross in." She quickly stepped out of Goren's half-embrace. "He's gonna want to punch a hole in the wall when he hears about this. Let me go find my dad."

Goren stood for a moment in the empty room, his fidgety arms hanging by his sides. He gazed at one of the wedding pictures on the wall – a twenty-eight year-old Alex, standing with her husband, grinning. In the seven-and-a-half years they'd worked together, Goren had never seen his partner smile like that.

He picked up a frame that was on top of the tall dresser in front of him. Christmas Day, 1997: Alex and Joe and her parents on the sofa, a Christmas tree in the background. Smiles everywhere. A different woman from the one he knew.

But, all things considered, maybe he didn't know her as well as he'd thought.

"Detective Goren?" John Eames stood in the doorway.

"We – we'll have Nassau County PD put a detail on the house," was all he could think to say.

"And you'll make sure our guys are watching Alex's place, too?"

"Absolutely."

"Alex worries about you." John shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the rug. "This year, she left Christmas dinner early because she wanted to bring you something. She wanted to make sure you weren't by yourself."

"Yes, that – was very thoughtful – of her."

"She takes care of you. Do the same for her."

"I will, sir."

Eames, who'd fetched her coat and bag, joined them. "Let's go," she told her partner.

Ross somehow managed to remain calm when Eames explained the particulars of the situation to him, though his eyes darted from place to place as he assured her that she wasn't to blame. "Go home, get some rest, detective," he said. "I'll let Logan deal with Interpol."

"No," Eames insisted, "let me handle this. I'm not up for going home tonight, anyway."

She would spend a sleepless night at Major Case with no one around but Logan and a pair of detectives who kept ducking in and out while they investigated a kidnapping. She'd ordered Goren to go home and sleep; it was still important that he sleep through the night, or at least try to, she knew.

Logan ordered a pizza just after midnight, and set a few bottles of water on her desk. Even without knowing the whole story, he was considerate.

"Hey, Eames," Logan said, sauntering over from the fax machine. "This your guy?"

He set a fax down on her desk, and indeed, she found herself looking at a photograph of Willem Kreiner, her baby's father. Her … well, the man responsible for the fetus. Right.

Her head bounded, her eyes burned, and she thought she might need to grab hold of the garbage can and lose her one A.M. pizza.

She'd assumed Willem was just a thief hired by one of Lucy Colacci's people to steal the file that held Lucy's hospital records. But Willem Kreiner was a known assassin. He was wanted in Lucerne, where he'd carried out a hit on a businessman from a roof above, and in Paris, where he'd allegedly shot four Russian men while they chatted on the steps of a municipal building. One bullet from above per death in each case. The same M.O. If she had this baby, it would have half of its father's genes, the genes of a hitman, a killer, a murderer.

Eames stood up, brushed a concerned Logan aside, and went into the women's bathroom, where she locked herself in a stall, slammed her head into the door, and quietly cried.


	9. Evidence

**Quick AN re: ratings **Eames has some important decisions to make here, of course, so if you think that characters' discussing abortion warrants an "M" rating, then we'll call these next two chapters "M." Personally, I think the "T" rating works just fine, but I figured I'd offer advance warning for the next couple of chapters.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

At seven a.m., Eames returned from her sixth trip to the ladies' room and found her partner sitting at his desk, reading Interpol's file on Willem Kreiner.

"We found our shooter," she said, rolling up her sleeves and sinking into her chair.

Goren kept reading, his heavy eyelids covering up whatever he might have been thinking. "We put out an alert with Interpol," she added.

"Right." Goren still didn't look up.

"This guy's a real pro. I'm sure he won't give up who hired him even if we do find him."

Goren shrugged spasmodically. "We're watching Andrew Colacci pretty closely. If he doesn't trip up, we're stuck."

"I'm sorry, Bobby."

"Hey. Eames." He raised his eyebrows. "It's not your fault."

"And_ how_ is it not?"

"You want to go up the block and get some breakfast before Ross gets back? You look like you could use something."

"No, I'm not hungry. Don't worry about me, Bobby."

He leaned down on the desk so he was at eye-level with her. "It's not your fault," he repeated.

"I thought it might be fun to be a little reckless for one night," she said softly. "And I wasn't even … that … reckless. Getting me pregnant definitely wasn't part of his plan."

"Hm." He covered his mouth with one hand and started reading again.

"The answer is no," Eames whispered so that only Goren could hear. "Knowing this, there's no way I can keep it."

"Okay." His eyelids fluttered.

"Good morning, detectives," Ross announced, offering his usual brightly sarcastic greeting. "What do you have for me?"

"Let's talk in your office," Eames said, taking the Interpol fax from Goren.

As Eames recounted the events of the late night to Ross, she couldn't help but notice how Goren had slumped over near his desk.

Yes, she understood the implications -- for him, for her partner, who really had nothing to do with this -- of basing her decision about whether or not to carry the pregnancy to term on the fact that the father was wanted for at least seven murders.

"Detective Eames, I in no way mean to invade your privacy," Ross said uncomfortably, "but I need to go downstairs and talk to Rodgers first, because no matter what you do, you're … you're evidence."

Eames started to speak, but cleared her throat and crinkled her forehead instead. "I'll talk to her," she said slowly, suddenly terrified at the prospect of being an important piece of evidence in the Hale-Melnick murders.

Kreiner was not supposed to get her pregnant, she was certain of that. And she knew, from Interpol's fax, exactly how he took care of incriminating evidence.

Memories of her kidnapping started to bubble to the surface. She took a deep breath and tried to remember what the therapist she'd stopped seeing immediately after the department-ordered six weeks were up had said about times like this.

It was of no use. She fortified herself against her fears and marched back out to the squad room, past Goren and to the elevators.

Downstairs, Rodgers explained to her that she'd ask the obstetrician for fluids after the abortion so that the M.E.'s office could examine the DNA. "Not that DNA'll actually do you much good in finding the guy," Rodgers reminded her.

"We need evidence … just in case we do find him. We'll at least be able to put him at the scene, in a way."

"Detective? I may be overstepping my bounds here, but –"

"Overstepped bounds? Join the club."

"Would you want to take a look at some of the research on how environment is much more important than genetics in personality development?"

"That's not the only reason why I have to terminate my pregnancy," she said, knowing in the back of her mind that the fact that the father was a skilled assassin was nevertheless a damn good reason. "If we find Kreiner, we wouldn't be able to get him in front of a judge until at least next year. We'd have to worry about extradition and whole lot of other issues. I can't protect a child from these people while we're waiting for trial. I can't. Look what happened to Hale and Melnick."

Eames promised Rodgers she'd call her as soon as everything was over. Returning to Major Case, she found Goren waiting for her by the elevators.

"Ross says if nothing turns up with Andrew Colacci in the next couple of days, we've got to move this case to the backburner," he said matter-of-factly.

"McCoy'll crush him."

"We could lean on Andrew harder, but I don't see him giving up his sister's whereabouts."

"McCoy's friend was killed and one of his ADAs practically lost part of her arm. You think he'll be okay with us putting the case on the backburner?"

"He's much more responsible for this mess than you are."

"Let's not play the blame game," she said, throwing up her hands as if to shoo him away. "McCoy made some bad mistakes, and maybe he precipitated this whole thing, but it's our job to find the hitman and whoever hired him. That's what we do." She started to head back to her desk.

"Hey – hey, Alex." He chased after her with a few short steps. "We all do stupid, awful, reckless things that screw us over for life, remember?"

When she smiled, a tear fell. She hadn't meant to let that happen.

She agreed to stop working for half an hour and have breakfast with Goren. "When I was a kid," she said, cradling a cup of coffee that she desperately needed, "I had an aunt who used to destroy things when she got drunk. Plants, TV sets, windows, my kid brother's nose."

"You're not comparing yourself to her."

"No, she was an alcoholic. She had problems that my father couldn't help her with. But I just think" – here she put down her cup and touched a hand to her forehead while she used the other hand to pick up a piece of toast – "I think, look how destructive I managed to be."

There was an almost sweet look of compassion in his face as he leaned to the side and watched her bite into her toast. "You're going to be all right?" was all he asked.

"No," she said, "but thanks."


	10. Easter Sunday

"You are not _working_ on Easter Sunday," Johnny Eames said, feigning shock when he found his sister hiding out in a non-crime-scene guest room at their parents' house, poring over her laptop computer.

"Nah," she said, slamming the laptop shut and standing to embrace her brother.

"Come on downstairs. The kids are all asking for you, and dinner's almost ready."

She started to follow him, but he stopped and turned to face her. "Dad said not to talk to you about the baby, so … what did Goren do? I can take him, I know I can."

She let out a half-hearted laugh. "One, you cannot 'take' my partner, and two, I promise you, he is not the father. And three –"

"The father turned out to be the perp in a crime you're investigating."

"Stop. If you're really concerned about my safety, you'll stop with the conjectures _now_."

"I saw the APB on the guy you brought here on New Year's. It's not 'conjecture.' If I was good at 'conjecture,' I'd have made detective. The department had better have your back every step of the way."

"Johnny," she whispered, "they do."

"So, right, I guess you didn't take communion this morning?"

"_Cool it_," she hissed.

Johnny ducked to the side. "I didn't know how else to –"

"Listen to Dad and don't broach the topic."

Eames joined her family downstairs, where John was already carving the ham and dishes were being passed around the table. Cathy Eames, the family matriarch, reached over to stop Susan, the eldest Eames sister, from passing a bottle of red wine to Alex.

"No, no, hon, Alex is still pregnant."

The five adults at the table who hadn't known about the pregnancy immediately stopped what they were doing.

No one wanted to call Cathy out on her mistake. Since she'd suffered a stroke a few years back, she often said out loud what she was supposed to keep to herself. Up until today, no one had minded much.

Alex had wanted to tell her mother everything, but she couldn't, at least until after the trial, if there was a trial. Until then, the extra DNA she carried was the only evidence they had that even suggested that Willem Kreiner was involved in the crime.

"Who's the father?" Susan asked matter-of-factly.

Laura, the sister who was in the loop, tossed a dinner roll at Susan. "_Not_ Sunday dinner conversation," she insisted.

"Do you know, Laura? Come on, tell us."

"Guys." Eames shook her head.

"Mom said you are … "still" … pregnant. The father's not around?"

"The father has some serious health problems in his family, and it might be a problem for me to carry his baby to term," she lied, thinking fast. John nodded, satisfied with his daughter's lie. "And we're not … together as a couple right now, so …"

Susan dropped her fork. "_Bobby Goren_?"

"His whole family's got problems," Laura said, playing along.

"He couldn't even join us for dinner?" Cathy asked.

"I told you, we're not together." The thought of what her mother might say to Goren half-amused her, a little bit of light in what was turning out to be a dark situation.

Eames' cell phone rang. Relieved to be saved by the ringtone, she flipped open the phone and went into the kitchen.

"You're going to want to come down here," Goren said.

"I can't. Easter Sunday. Fighting with family."

"We aren't fighting!" Susan shouted from the other room. "Get your ass out here, Bobby, and face the family!"

"What was that?"

"I'll explain later. What's going on downtown?"

"Rodgers would like to see you. It's … there's a body we need to look at."

"Can it wait a few hours?"

"Eames, we …"

"Okay. I'll be there in an hour." She snapped her phone shut and returned to the dinner table. "I'm needed downtown," she told her family.

A collective groan. "We have a break in a case, it's important," she said.

Forty-five minutes later, she joined Goren at the M.E.s. Her heart fell to her toes when she saw Willem Kreiner's body on the table. His eyes were open. She didn't want to remember his eyes.

"Is this your guy?" Rodgers asked. She didn't seem too thrilled about having to work on Easter Sunday, either.

"This is him. This is … definitely … him."

"Three shots to the chest."

"Defensive wounds?"

"Not a one."

"He avoids getting picked up by Interpol for fifteen years but is shot point-blank in the chest?"

Rodgers looked quickly to Goren. "Time of death is between nine and noon today," she said. "A jogger found him up in Riverside Park and the wounds were still pretty fresh."

Eames shuffled her feet. "I get you."

"You'll give us your EZ-Pass?" Goren asked.

"Yes, it's in my car. I haven't been in the city since last night, and I was at my parents' since eleven o'clock this morning."

"We already ruled you out, Eames," he said. "I mean … I knew it couldn't have been you, but …"

"But for the first couple of minutes, I was a very good suspect. I understand."

"They already found the gun. It was in the river, but we're hoping to get a print or two off the cartridge."

"We should go upstairs and update Ross," Eames said, averting her eyes from the corpse.

"Right." Goren walked towards the door.

"You'll have your evidence on Tuesday," Eames told Rodgers. "But please don't say a word to anyone outside of Major Case about the day."

Goren and Eames returned to their desks upstairs and, for a while, said nothing to each other. Ross, who'd been called in when Kreiner's body was found, emerged from his office to join his detectives.

"Don't bother waiting for the lab," he said. "Nothing will get done until tomorrow. Go home to your families."

Eames tilted her head and looked up at Ross.

"I mean, nothing's going to get done here today, anyway." Foot planted firmly in mouth, Captain, she thought.

Goren made a loose fist and pounded his hand on the desk. "The lab also needs to see if they can match the slug from Novak's shoulder to the slugs in Kreiner's chest. Maybe the same woman – Lucy Colacci –shot them both. She was angry at Novak for getting her hands on the information that would expose her as the Lavin family shooter. And think about how this woman must view unplanned pregnancies, think about what that must remind her of. She may have been furious at Kreiner for getting you pregnant. Three shots, one after the other, all aiming for his heart."

"Go home, Detective," Ross insisted.

"I need to look at –"

"He's been here for two days straight," Ross told Eames.

Eames shot Goren a look that (hopefully) cut right through him. "Wait'll we see what we get on the gun," Ross continued. "I want this case to rest on fingerprints, not feelings."


	11. Going Home

Within the hour, Goren and Eames were in Eames' car, headed towards the Williamsburg Bridge. "Imagine Rodgers having to spend Easter Sunday with corpses," she said.

"But she'll get a kick out of her first Passover seder next month."

Eames smiled, the first familiar broad smile he'd seen from her in weeks. "Never thought you were one for workplace gossip."

After they crossed the bridge, Goren detached the EZ-Pass from the windshield. "You shouldn't be the one to take that in," she said. "Leave it for now. We'll have someone from CSU get it tomorrow."

"Do you have our guys escorting you on Tuesday?"

"Yes, don't worry."

"I worry about you anyway, Eames," he said, almost coyly.

"Bobby, my mother accidentally told the whole family I was pregnant."

"Oh." He lowered his eyes. "No one else should know where you'll be on Tuesday."

"Right, so since our other, less-skilled shooter is out there, I don't want her getting to me. I had to tell a white lie."

"Hm."

"I had to say I wasn't sure what I was going to do yet because the father's family had some serious mental health issues."

"You told them …"

"Had to think quickly, sorry."

"So your mother thinks I'm the father."

"As does my older brother, his wife, my sister Susan, her husband, and my brother Johnny's wife. You, uh, want to stop over for some dinner?" It was already seven-thirty; Easter dinner was probably long over because her siblings had to get their children home and ready for school the next day. "No one's there except my parents."

"I'm not sure I want to face your mother right now," he said with an uneasy laugh.

"She understands about your family, I think. She really wanted for you to come to Christmas dinner, you know."

Goren smiled and began to tap his long fingers on the dashboard. "All right. I'll have dinner with you."

"You're not angry at me?"

"Like you said, you had to think fast."

Goren, along with Alex and John Eames, were quite surprised when Cathy greeted him with a motherly embrace at the door. "So _good_ to see you again, Bobby."

Alex and John looked at each other, wide-eyed.

"Everything okay at work?" she asked.

Eames nodded. "Nothing to worry about."

Cathy made up a plate for each of the detectives, and they sat together at the kitchen table. Goren seemed terribly fidgety – more than usual, if that were possible – but, really, Eames couldn't blame him.

"So," Cathy said, "They haven't split up your partnership yet?"

John cleared his throat. "No, see, they haven't said anything to their captain yet."

"My brain my hiccup every once in a while, sweetheart – and I'm sorry about what I said at dinner – but I'm not stupid. You're not the father."

"Mrs. Eames," Goren said calmly, "we're sorry we've had to lie. But it's very important to your daughter's safety that you not ask any questions now."

Cathy retreated slowly. Funny how Goren, who could never sit or stand still himself, had such a talent for calming people down.

Later, when they were back in the car, Goren sighed loudly. "Too much," he said, half to himself. "This is getting to be too much, Eames."

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Like Ross said. Two days ago."

"Don't lie to me."

He was silent. "Bobby?" she prodded.

"I've been trying to connect Kreiner to Lucy through his previous crimes. They must have known each other in Switzerland. Lovers, maybe?"

"You heard what Ross said. Let's wait for the fingerprints and focus on our other cases right now. I'm taking you home with me."

"What?" He looked like someone had hit him in the stomach with a shovel.

"Because I promised the captain I'd make sure you were sleeping."

"I'll be honest with you. I've been up working on the case because we've got to connect Kreiner to one of the Colaccis before …"

"_I know_." Her voice took on a sharp, frustrated tone. "But you do not need to clean up my messes."

"You cleaned up mine."

"You don't owe me anything."

"Eames, I think sometimes …" He stopped, clasped his hands together, and wrenched his jaw a bit. "I think I may owe you everything."


	12. The Ship Sails?

Eames lay in bed for an hour before finally falling asleep. When she opened her eyes again, the clock read 2:15 and it was still dark. She'd only slept forty-five minutes.

Rising slowly, she wandered into the living room, where Goren slept on his back on the sofabed.

"Ten nine eight seven six five four three two one … ten nine eight … ten nine eight …" He lay perfectly still, repeating numbers as he slept. "Ten nine eight seven six five four …"

Didn't they teach armed forces specialists to count down from ten as a method of withstanding torture? Concerned, she stood over him, waiting for him to wake up.

When he opened his eyes, he looked helpless. He breathed out through pursed lips and kept looking up at Eames.

She switched on a lamp near the bed and he flinched. "I'll take them, I'll take them, okay, I'll take them," he muttered, and she realized that he still wasn't entirely awake.

"Bobby …" Tentatively, she sat at the edge of the bed and ran a hand back and forth across his hairline, just like she'd do for her nieces and nephews when they had night terrors. It was all she could think of to do to calm him down. "You haven't slept in, what, three days? Four days?"

"I have to find her."

"Before she finds me, you're saying."

Goren sat up slowly and struggled to get his bearings. "We're not going to let that happen," he promised.

"I'm not worried," she lied.

"If I were more awake I'd point out every little facial movement of yours that tells me you are definitely worried."

"You okay?" she asked.

"I will be." He squeezed her hand tightly.

Eames put her feet up on the bed. Interesting, she thought, how Goren recoiled slightly and moved an inch or two away from her when she did that. She'd learned from him that every single physical action, no matter how minor, was a "tell" of sorts.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said, and Goren laid his head back. "Do you think I can protect a child from the Colaccis or whoever else might have hired Kreiner?"

"Eames," he said, closing his eyes and letting out another breath of air, "that's not what you're really concerned about."

"Stop_ reading_ me. And you'd think if we're close enough friends that we can sit up in bed together and talk about whether or not I should be a mother, you could call me Alex."

Goren smiled slightly as he opened his eyes. "Frank had my mother convinced that you were my girlfriend. That was why she wanted so much to meet you before she died."

"Hey, it didn't take too much to convince my sister Susan that you fathered my child." She paused, realizing why Goren had brought up his mother and brother. "What the hell kind of mother would I be if every time I looked into my kid's eyes I thought, 'those are the eyes of a man who assassinated at least seven people'?"

"Well."

"Did you ever find out?"

"Would it change your opinion of me? Would you request a new partner if you knew my biological father was a rapist and serial killer?"

"No, because I know you're more than just …"

"An unfortunate genetic sequence."

Eames shut the light and laid down next to Goren – not touching him, just facing him. "Try to go to sleep," she said. "You know I promised Ross I'd make sure you were sleeping."

"You didn't even ask if I knew."

"About your father? I thought since you used the name Brady when –"

He shut his eyes. "No, no, I never found out. It'd have been easy enough, but I don't want to know." His eyes suddenly flew open. "Eames."

"It would not make a difference in how I look at you."

"Then there's your answer."

She leaned over to kiss his forehead, a small token of thanks. "You should go back to your own bed," he said, running a hand up and down her arm.

"Why?"

"Because I have dreams about how Frank said to me I should –" The lack of sleep was destroying his ability to censor himself.

Eames was sitting up now. "What'd Frank say?"

"Nothing."

"C'mon, I'm an adult. I won't freak out if you tell me your drug-addicted brother told you it was time for you to just get it over with and have sex with your partner."

She could see him laughing in the dark. "Get it out of my system, were his exact words. You're good, Eames, very good."

Eames finally complied and got out of bed. "Only in your dreams," he thought he heard her say before she disappeared down the hall.

His partner sure had a mean streak sometimes.


	13. Break

Six-thirty Monday morning.

Eames smacked her alarm clock and rolled back onto her stomach, pressing her face into her pillow.

Two weeks away from the end of the first trimester.

If all went well, just two more weeks of morning sickness, evening sickness, and whatever the hell else it was that had possessed her to crawl into bed with her partner the night before.

_God, what I wouldn't give to try just once_ … She quickly climbed out of bed, annoyed that she'd let that thought bubble to the surface.

Goren was still asleep on the sofabed, peaceful, comfortable, still. She decided she'd shower first and then wake him.

In the shower, she remembered that she'd decided on the way back to her room that she would keep the baby. She let the water rinse her hair clean and tried to forget Willem Kreiner's eyes.

Goren was awake by the time Eames was dressed, standing near the sofa while balancing his open leather portfolio in his right hand. He waved his cell phone in front of her. "We got a hit on a print from the cartridge."

"So where are we going?"

"Ross already sent a team out to pick her up."

"Lucy Colacci?"

"No. Lanora Padua." He ran his finger over a page in his portfolio. "Ross said she's a former gangbanger's girl, or a gangbanger's former girl, something like that. She did twenty years in Bedford for shooting a store owner in the course of a robbery, and according to her parole officer, she was supposed to be turning her life around."

"How long has she been out?"

"Over six years. And we've got a possible connection to the Colaccis, too – her ex-boyfriend was arrested in connection with a couple of mob extortion schemes a few years ago."

"So now we've got to connect her to the ex and the ex to one of the Colacci children. And the DA'll want motive. This could be a long day."

"Can I use your shower?

"No," she said, "you have to walk into interrogation sweaty and covered in sleep creases."

Goren laughed, genuinely entertained, as always, by her sacrcasm. "Go," Eames ordered. "Shower. We should get moving."

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

"Ms. Padua, I'm Detective Goren and this is Detective Eames. You may not believe this, but we" – here he paused ad set a stack of folders on the table – "are here to help you."

Padua's lawyer, a silver-haired defense attorney who was most likely no Danielle Melnick, leaned back in his chair. "And how are you here to _help_ my client?"

"We know she didn't wake up one morning and decide to kill Willem Kreiner on her own," Eames said. "We know she has someone to give up."

"I want an ADA in here before we talk deal."

"An ADA. You mean like the one your client shot two weeks ago?"

The lawyer whispered something to Padua, and she shook her head. "Look," she said, "I don't have anything to do with guns or people who carry them anymore. I've got a four-year-old at home, I got myself a GED when I was in Bedford and an associate's from Brooklyn Community College after I got out, and I'm _working_. You just ask my P.O., she'll swear to it."

"You were married a year after you got out," Goren said, pointing to his notes.

"Yeah. We met in the adult learning program at Brooklyn Community."

"And divorced six months ago?"

"You can't expect everything to work out, right?"

"Your son lives with his father now. They awarded your ex-husband full custody. That's unusual."

"Not when the mother's an ex-con."

"Detective," Padua's lawyer interrupted, "I don't understand what these questions have to do with –"

"But you didn't contest the judge's decision because you _knew_ your son was better off with his father. You knew he was better off far away from you and whoever you owe from Bedford."

Padua folded her arms and looked up at the ceiling.

"Maybe you'll see some old friends back at Rikers," Eames said. "And maybe we can get some of your older, dearer friends from Bedford to sit down for a chat with us."

"You have an older son, too," Goren said.

"Yes," Padua whispered.

"Why are you asking my client questions about her children?" her lawyer grumbled.

"Well, her older son's father is Rick Cumana, who graduated from gangbanger to mob muscle about a decade ago," Eames said. "Not a transition too many people make."

"I don't talk to Rick anymore."

"We're done," the lawyer insisted.

"Okay," Eames said, standing. "You're not ready to tell us why Rick's friends had you go after Novak and kill Kreiner. We'll leave you alone and let you think about spending the rest of your life in prison. Talk to the DA, though, maybe they can arrange for you to be out in time to see your little one's high school graduation." She started for the door, where she suddenly lost her footing and fell to the ground.

Ross hurried forward to help her to her feet. As she latched on to Ross's arm, she announced, loud enough for Goren to hear, "Call my sister Susan. What Susan knows about my condition is important."

She waited behind the glass with Ross and ADA Connie Rubirosa, assistant to the EADA, who had been sent to observe the interrogation.

"You all right there, Detective?" Rubirosa asked.

"In tip-top shape," Eames answered. She hoped Goren had picked up her cue.

In the interrogation room, Goren kept looking back at the mirror. He stood and opened the door. "Alex, you all right?" he shouted. "Give me five minutes, and I'll take you to the doctor."

He returned to his seat and began collecting his things. "I have responsibilities much more important than this," he told Padua and her lawyer. "Get her to arraignment, we'll talk to her again at Rikers."

Padua balled up a clump of her hair in one hand and stared quizzically at Goren.

"She's four months pregnant. I'm … well, probably by the next time you see us, we won't be working partners anymore." He held his papers loosely in his arms and inched towards the door. "I've really got to get her to the doctor. Have to make sure my baby's okay."

Padua coughed.

"Ms. Padua?" Goren asked.

"No," she said.

"Wait." He dropped everything back on the table. "Alex, give me one minute. _One minute_." He feigned surprise at Padua's reaction. "Did you kill Kreiner because …"

"Are you sure that baby's yours?" Padua spit out.

"I'd advise you not to …" the lawyer began.

"I might want to make this deal after all. Detective, her baby's Kreiner's."

"No, it's not. She's four months pregnant, not three. The sonograms confirm it. Would you like to see?"

"Don't speak to him until we can get an ADA in here," her lawyer warned.

"Got one," Rubirosa announced, setting her briefcase down.

Ross followed close behind. "Detective, go tend to the … the … mother of your child," he said, struggling to play along.

"Detective," Padua called.

"I've got to get _moving_, Ms. Padua."

"Rick said this Kreiner guy screwed us all over by getting this one detective pregnant, and he said he'd give me up as the one who shot the ADA if they questioned him. I got set up. Rick must have had some other beef with Kreiner. I got set up – doesn't that count for anything?"

"Yes," her lawyer said. "She gives up who's behind this, she does five years?"

"Ten to fifteen," Rubirosa offered. "Like Detective Eames said, she'll see her son graduate from high school."

"Look, I owed Rick for keeping me safe at Bedford, all right? He said I owed him this one thing. With Novak, he didn't want me to shoot to kill … I didn't even mean to hurt her as bad as I did, I swear to God. But he set me up."

"ADA Novak will be in and out of the hospital all year," Goren reminded her. "She needs at least three reconstructive surgeries."

"I was supposed to go for her arm. With Kreiner, though, Rick really set me up. I thought I had to kill him to keep myself out of the whole mess with Dr. Hale and his lawyer. The bastard set me up."

"No, see," Eames said, entering as if on cue, "Rick may be a bastard, but he didn't set you up." She laid a hand on her stomach. "Kreiner's baby."

"Don't say _anything else_," the lawyer muttered.

"We got her on Kreiner's murder and Novak's shooting, which we could always interpret as attempted murder if we want." Eames sauntered over to Padua and leaned in close. "So there's not much else she can say, unless she wants to give up Hale's shooter."

"Ten years."

"If she testifies against everyone involved," Rubirosa said.

"Can you guarantee me my little boy will be safe?" Padua asked.

"We'll do what we can," was all Ross could promise.

"No," Goren interjected, "we'll do everything in our power to keep him out of this."

Padua seemed to trust Goren despite the fact that he'd schemed a confession out of her moments earlier.

"All I know if, Kreiner was an ex-boyfriend of the Colacci daughter's back in Switzerland. She hired him to take out the doctor and his lawyer. I don't know why, I just figured the doctor knew too much about whatever it was really happened. That's all Rick ever told me."

Padua, her lawyer, and Rubirosa finished working out the specifics of the deal while Goren and Eames met with Ross in his office.

"Nice work, detectives."

"We do what we can, Captain." Eames sat down, now genuinely feeling the strain of the interrogation in her legs and lower back. "So, what's next? We call Interpol and the Swiss police and have them try to find Lucy?"

Goren, who was still standing and pacing, shook an index finger at the air. "We pick up Andrew Colacci."

"The brother?" Ross said. "What have we got on the brother?"

"There must be a really specific reason they had Rick Cumana ask his forty-four year-old ex-girlfriend to do the Novak and Kreiner jobs."

Eames raised her eyebrows. "They wanted us to _think_ Lucy was in the US orchestrating this whole mess."

"Right. Someone wanted witnesses to see a woman in her forties on the scene."

Rubirosa appeared in Ross's doorway. "That theory and some _evidence_ will get you an arrest warrant for Andrew Colacci."

Goren approached the ADA. "Give me your cell phone number. I'll call you tonight as soon as I have that evidence."

"Great," she said, "another 25-hour workday."

"Hey, a woman from your office was shot, and your boss's friend was –"

"All right, you get me the evidence, I'll wait by the phone."

Goren seemed to be working himself up into one of his infamous theory-of-the-crime frenzies. "Something about what Andrew said when we talked to him two weeks ago – there was definitely something – give me a couple hours by myself in the interview room and I'll have this."

Goren bounded out of the office and headed for his desk.

"Is he always like this?" Rubirosa asked.

"You haven't worked much with Major Case, have you?" Ross said. "After awhile, it becomes downright charming. Right, Eames?"

"Whatever you say, Captain."


	14. Expecting the Unexpected

At five, she handed a file on a stolen art case off to an ADA and waved goodbye to Goren, who was still alternately leaping over photos laid out on the floor and pressing his nose up to a bulletin board in an interview room. At six, she went to her obstetrician and told him she was keeping the baby after all. By nine, she decided to head back in to One PP. She couldn't sleep knowing that Goren wasn't sleeping.

When she walked to her apartment building's garage, she held her weapon in her hands. Against department policy for an off-duty officer, sure, but she was an off-duty officer with a womb full of evidence.

Her obstetrician had told her that they couldn't do an amniocentesis until the seventeenth week. Secretly, this terrified her. Maybe she'd ask Goren to go with her to the doctor's.

Funny, she thought, how the first person she thought of when she needed someone wasn't a sibling, or a parent, or one of the group of friends who'd slowly disappeared after Joe died, but Bobby Goren. What if, she wondered as she crossed the bridge, what if, what if, what if.

Nine years earlier, she'd learned the most important reason why you don't naively give your heart over to a cop who's also your best friend.

What if she'd stayed in bed with Goren the night before?

That thought was quickly interrupted by an obnoxious honk from a yellow cab. She'd drifted into the next lane.

Upon walking into Major Case, Eames was immediately struck by the sight of Casey Novak, in jeans and a T-shirt, and a sling that kept her entire right arm splinted to her chest, sitting on Goren's desk, while a contented-looking Goren reclined in his chair, his hands behind his head. They were engrossed in conversation, Novak nodding sympathetically every few seconds.

Eames told her end-of-first-trimester hormones to shut the hell up.

"Detective Eames!" Novak waved her over with her free hand.

"Ms. Novak was helping us out with finding Lucy Colacci." He was almost sweetly sheepish he stood, circled the two desks, and pulled Eames' chair out for her.

"Thanks." She struggled not to roll her eyes. "Have we found anything usable on Andrew yet?"

"Like I told you, something he said when we questioned him got me thinking. I need to hear back from the Swiss police first."

Novak hopped off the desk. "Time for me to pop another pill," she announced. She paused to look down at Goren, who was seated again, staring at his phone. "And, thank you, detective, it's always nice to talk to someone who understands."

Eames involuntarily shook her head in disbelief. "We were talking about what it's like to be responsible for a schizophrenic's well-being," he offered.

"I didn't ask."

"You twisted your lips and then smiled. Classic Eamesian sign of disapproval."

"I thought I warned you to stop reading me."

Goren's phone rang. He picked up the receiver and spoke to what must have been a Swiss detective; every few sentences he threw in a couple of French or German words to make himself clear. "November 1979," he repeated, writing down the date and a Swiss cross-street. "Thank you, Detective."

"Well?" Eames prodded.

"We've got to pick up Andrew Colacci. You remember what he said about not having seen his sister in years and how he could _honestly_ tell us she hadn't left Switzerland since their mother sent her to school there? When someone says _honestly_ like that, they're conveying a white lie." His voice was speeding up. "Lucy hasn't left Switzerland because she committed suicide in November of 1979."

"And yet Andrew wanted us to think she was alive. I don't know if this will be enough for the DA, though."

Novak returned and leaned against Goren's desk. "Did I just hear you say Lucy Colacci committed suicide?"

"She never even saw twenty-one," Goren said. "Tell me this is enough to pick up her brother."

"Rubirosa's going to ask you for more evidence."

"What if a bandaged-up ADA who has to go back into the hospital next week asked a judge about an arrest warrant?"

_You could have asked her the same question without the puppy-dog eyes_, Eames' out-of-whack body chemistry grumbled.

"That would be an ethical violation," Novak said.

Eames leaned forward. "Being that one of the investigating detectives on this case is pregnant with the child of one of the alleged conspirators, ethical violations are not number one on our list of concerns right now."

"It will be number one on a defense attorney's list," Novak warned.

"What if – without saying anything to ADA Rubirosa – we go over to Andrew's apartment now," Goren suggested. "Just to talk to him. It's an emergency. We just got new information on his sister, and we need to deal with it immediately."

"He could be dangerous. You'll have to bring backup. A defense attorney'll eat you alive for bursting into his family's home with a SWAT team and scaring the crap out of his kids."

"We have _no other option_," Goren said, standing and slamming his portfolio down on the table. "We have to move on this guy now, before he leaves the country."

"All right." Novak raised her free hand since she couldn't quite throw her arms up in defeat. "But if you hand Colacci's lawyer a defense strategy, McCoy'll crush Major Case."

Before they could answer, Goren's cell phone buzzed.

"Goren," he answered. "Good … no, keep talking to him. Keep him talking. This is good news for us. Just do whatever you can to keep him talking."

Goren snapped the phone shut. "Andrew Colacci," he told Eames, "is sitting on his bed aiming a gun at his own throat."

"No more ethics to worry about now," Eames commented.


	15. Shock

Goren and Eames arrived at the scene to find Colacci's wife, son, and daughter huddled downstairs in their building's lobby. Upstairs, an officer stood outside the apartment while two others remained inside, following Goren's orders to keep Colacci talking.

Colacci kept the gun pointed at his own throat.

"Your wife and kids are downstairs," Goren said immediately. "Don't do this to them. They deserve an explanation."

"It's my fault Lucy's dead. I don't ever want my wife to know what I did. Please, she can't know."

"Is that why you had Dr. Hale kill your father? You didn't want your wife to find out you killed the Lavins?"

Tears ran down his face. "The only reason my wife ever loved me was that I'm not my father. But then I … his people … and Lucy's … Lucy wasn't supposed to get involved … our little Lucy wasn't supposed to grow up to be a mob moll."

"Hand me the gun and you can tell me all about it, Andrew. I won't say a word to your wife, or anyone." He moved in closer. Touching his own heart with his fingertips, Goren continued, "Andrew. My father was a criminal too. A murderer. A man who you can't describe as human. I understand. If you put the gun down, you can confide in me, you have my word. I'll ask Detective Eames and these other officers to leave. Just hand me the –"

Colacci turned the gun away from his own body, but suddenly lurched forward toward Eames, his brown eyes taking on a maniacal glint as he aimed directly at her abdomen.

Eames heard a shot and felt the barrel of Colacci's gun pressing into her skin.

The gun fell to the floor and so did Eames.

She was on her knees, forced into unintentional prayer.

Carefully, she rocked back into a sitting position and surveyed the scene.

She had not been shot. One of the officers, a young man who couldn't have been older than twenty-five, had wounded Colacci, who wailed as his right arm bled. Goren was calling for two buses.

She heard him behind her, shouting at the officer who'd shot Colacci. An angry, unmodulated New York accent: "You almost got my partner shot! IAB's gonna have your head for this one, kid."

"I thought it was the only way …"

The sound of a young man being slammed into a wall. "Forget about your badge, forget about your pension, I'm gonna tell them about the asshole rookie who almost got a 16-year veteran killed."

"Bobby, stop," she said almost inaudibly. She didn't know if he'd heard. It was like trying to shout a warning from inside a dream.

She heard Goren read Andrew his rights. His voice stopped up every few words.

"Eames, I've got a bus coming for you, too." Now he was kneeling down beside her. "Can you stand up?"

She drew her knees further into her chest, thinking that if she allowed herself to remember the last time she was this terrified (waking up suspended from the ceiling while listening to a girl being tortured behind a curtain), she'd just go further into shock. And the terror of experiencing what her husband had experienced when he was shot in the stomach – unimaginable, unspeakable.

A warm hand stretched across her back. Goren was checking her breathing, to make sure the emotional shock hadn't taken a physical toll on her heart and lungs.

She couldn't look at him. She continued to stare at the bed. "He … would have shot me if the kid didn't fire first."

"Don't worry about that." Goren must have realized it too. Colacci had become enraged upon hearing her name, and had been seconds away from pulling the trigger anyway. "Do you want me to ride with you to the hospital?"

"No, just … just get him. Do your thing and get us a full confession." She tried to smile to let him know she'd be all right, but instead she emitted a high-pitched whimper.

"You're safe," he told her.

"I know. I'm a little shaken up right now, but don't worry about me."

"You almost got hit, Eames, it's understandable." He lowered his voice to a whisper as his lips hovered near her ear. "If not for all these other cops around, I'd hold you in my arms and _promise_ you you'll be back to your old self in a couple of days."

But she could still feel the barrel of the gun.

Minutes later, she saw a pair of paramedics cart off Andrew Colacci. "She's twelve weeks pregnant," Goren said to a third paramedic. "Please be careful."

After they checked for spinal injuries, the paramedics helped Eames to her feet. "Looks like a couple of bad bruises, especially your knees, but let's get you to the hospital and make absolutely sure your baby's okay."

She nodded slowly and allowed them to lead her to the elevator. Images of curtains and weapons and Willem Kreiner's eyes flashed through her mind.


	16. Interrogation

Inside the interrogation room, Goren stared down Andrew Colacci while his lawyer looked on. "The Manhattan DA is on the other side of that mirror," Goren said, "so you'd better figure out a way to make yourself look sympathetic."

Indeed, Jack McCoy had risen out of bed at one in the morning to be present for this interrogation. Rubirosa watched as well, accompanied by the new EADA, Captain Ross, and a rather glassy-eyed Casey Novak.

"You told us you did what you did to keep your wife from finding out what you did back in the seventies. Now she's out there thinking about how there are three murders, assault with a deadly weapon, and an attempted manslaughter on your plate. No chance of saving that marriage. Tell me about the Lavins."

"His father has already been tried and convicted of that crime," Andrew's lawyer said loudly.

"Andrew." Goren latched his gaze onto the suspect's. "I thought we had an understanding."

"Lucy killed the Lavins," was all he said.

"Okay. I believe you." Goren shuffled through his notes. "I believe you because you're an honest man. You could have outright lied to us and said Lucy was alive in Switzerland. But you never did that. You said you hadn't seen her. You said she'd been in Switzerland since your mother sent her to school there. And she has been. In a grave outside Lugano."

"Detective, I …"

"You were one of only two? three people? who knew she was dead."

"It would have killed my mother. I let her think Lucy was just estranged."

"Your mother, you must have loved her very much."

"She was a saint for putting up with … for living the life she did for so many years."

"Be careful, Andrew," his lawyer interjected.

Goren ignored him. "You didn't want Lucy to wind up like your mother. Lavin would have left his wife and married your sister if she kept her baby. You killed Lavin so Lucy wouldn't turn into some kind of mob moll. But why his family? They were innocents caught up in their father's life just like you, your mother, and sister."

"I didn't kill the Lavins," Andrew said. "Lucy wasn't well. She …" He raised his head slowly and looked to Goren as if pleading for help.

"You didn't know how bad it was, how bad it could be."

Andrew gritted his teeth and squinted fiercely. "My mother wanted nothing more for me and Lucy than for us to get away from all the … crime, my father's life. Detective, I swear, we thought she was just an obnoxious, rebellious teenager. We didn't know she was sick."

"And her miscarriage made her sicker."

Andrew whispered something to his lawyer. The lawyer nodded, apparently a bit reluctantly, because his client really didn't have very many options.

"The idea was that just once I'd have my father's men do something for me. Just once, and Lucy and Mom and I would be free. I asked them to beat her up. That wasn't Lavin, it was never Lavin, it was me. Pete Lavin was ready to divorce his wife and marry my sister."

"Then _you_ triggered her psychosis by having her beaten to a pulp."

"My father cleaned up after the both of us, but he was ready to give me up last year because he wanted out before the Alzheimer's hit hard."

"Your wife," Goren said. "Everything was so your wife wouldn't find out what you'd done to your sister. You delighted in her because she thought you'd escaped from under your father's shadow, but you knew –"

"Detective," Andrew's lawyer said, "we're not yet prepared to go any further with this."

"Yes, we are," Goren said. "Your client is. Your client needs to prove to us that he's not his father."

"Don't even," Andrew began, but he was unable to finish. Breathing heavily, he took a sip from the plastic cup in front of him.

"You're manipulating my client using his psychological state."

"Like he manipulated his sister? Prove to me you're not your old man, Andrew, prove it."

"Kreiner was living with Lucy back when she did herself in. He loved her. So I told him we had to take care of my father to protect Lucy's name."

"You lied to a hitman to get him on your side."

"No," Andrew said, furious. "I did want to keep everybody from finding out Lucy killed the Lavins."

"No, you didn't," Goren taunted. "All you cared about was your own good name. You didn't want your father telling the parole board about how _you_ and the beating _you_ ordered set Lucy off."

"You want to hear what I have to say or not? Kreiner _never_ ran the Hale thing by me. Nobody except my father – a demented old man already responsible for a couple hundred murders himself – was supposed to die. Then when the DA filed charges against Hale I asked Kreiner to destroy the old file on Lucy. He must have thought Hale was ready to make a deal. _He_ was paranoid. _I_ didn't order any murders."

"What about Novak?"

"The ADA? All right, I talked to Rick Cumana about having somebody who could pass for Lucy shoot the ADA in the arm. But no murders. I never ordered any murders."

"And you think," Goren hissed, "that makes you _any_ different from your father?" He stood and crossed the room so that he was hovering over Andrew. "Now tell me why you were going to fire on Detective Eames and we're done here."

"Can we get an ADA in here to talk about a deal?" Andrew's lawyer asked.

"Deal? What deal? I can bring Jack McCoy himself in here so he can go face-to-face with the man responsible for his friend's murder. Would you like that?"

Ross opened the door. "Thank you, Detective," he said, "we've got everything we need."

Goren covered his eyes with one hand, made a fist with the other, and, together with Ross, marched out of the interrogation room.

"Thank you," an exhausted Jack McCoy said, extending a hand to Goren. "We've got him now on his father's murder and on the attack on Novak. And I'm certain what he said in there will fly with a grand jury if we charge him with conspiracy to commit murder for Hale and Melnick. Nice work."

Goren accepted the praise with a forced smile. "Detective, take the day off," Ross said. "But I need you back here on your regular shifts on Thursday and Friday."

"All right." Goren walked slowly back to his desk and began to pack up his things.

"Detective Goren?" He heard Casey Novak's voice behind him.

"Please call me Robert, or Bobby, or whatever you're comfortable with."

"Do you want me to see if I can convince my colleagues to add a count of attempted assault of a police officer? I'm still a pretty sympathetic character in McCoy's eyes, you know."

"I only wanted to hear him say he intended to shoot Eames." So he could tell Andrew he was just like Sam Colacci after all. "Do you need a lift somewhere?"

"I'm hitching a ride with Jack."

"In which case, I'm headed …"

"To check on your partner. Good."

"She was … shaken up," Goren said. "As I'm sure you were when –"

"I was in too much pain to be scared."

"Right. Well, I want to make sure she and the … she's doing all right." He lightly lifted Novak's free hand. "You weren't scared, because you and I, we've seen scarier."

"We have," she agreed.


	17. Question

The sun rising over the 59th Street Bridge nearly fried Goren's eyes as he drove east into Queens at five-thirty in the morning.

When he reached Queens Boulevard, he called Eames' cell phone. "Uh … Alexandra Eames' phone," a woman's voice answered.

"Who's this?"

"Bobby? It's Laura, Alex's sister."

"How is she?"

"Are you coming by? She's sleeping, but I think she really needs to see you when she wakes up."

"Did she lose the baby?" was all he could think to ask.

"No, no, the baby's okay, at least right now. She has to be careful, though. Just … I've never seen her like this. Please come by her place if you can."

He arrived at the apartment in Rockaway to find Eames curled up on the sofa, her eyes closed, her lips parted slightly. In her sleep, she clutched furiously at the comforter that covered her.

Laura took Goren into the kitchen. "I don't understand it," she said, her right hand trembling as she tried to set a coffee cup down on the table. "Alex got through her kidnapping like a goddamn superhero. Afterwards she was walking around with bruises on her face and rope marks on her wrist telling _us_ to stop worrying. And she's been shot at before. Dad always says she's ten times braver than he'll ever be."

Goren fell onto a chair. His eyes were heavy and he wished he would have shot Andrew in the chest when he'd turned his gun on Eames. "I think everything from the last two years finally caught up with her and hit her hard."

"She wouldn't talk to me. She kept … staring. And then when we got back from the hospital, she locked herself in the bathroom and threw up for half an hour. I don't know what to do. I stupidly talked her into having this baby, and now I've given her a nervous breakdown."

Goren reached over and touched Laura's forearm. "It's not a nervous breakdown," he told her. "If it was, they'd have kept her in the hospital."

Now Laura was crying. "I shouldn't dump this on you," she apologized. "But she … she's always done everything for me, she gave me my little boy, for God's sake, and I'm scared for her, that's all."

"Well," a tired, slightly nasal voice behind them said, "don't be."

Eames sauntered over to the stove, the bottoms of her gray sweatpants dragging across the linoleum floor. "Morning, Bobby," she said, filling a kettle with water and setting it back on the stove. "Go home and go to sleep before the captain squashes you like a bug tomorrow."

"Eames, I want to talk to you," he started to say.

"Like a bug," she repeated.

"I'm going to call into work and let them know I won't be in today," Laura announced, slipping out of the room.

Goren opened his arms to Eames. "I'm okay," she said, but walked into the hug anyway.

He held her closer to him than she expected. "You hold me any closer," she quipped, "and we'll be fulfilling Frank's prophecy."

"Don't talk about Frank." His hand was behind her head, stroking her hair.

"What're you _doing_?" she moaned, and the tears finally welled up in her eyes. She let herself break down for a minute, sobbing into his shirt, feeling totally secure, far from the image of Kreiner's eyes and the sensation of a gun being pressed to her stomach.

"There are a lot of days when …" She quickly sniffed and stopped herself.

"When?" he prodded.

"I can't tell you this."

"You can." He could be oddly straightforward sometimes.

"There are a lot of days … just in the last two years, maybe … when I think I'd rather be in love with you than be your friend and partner."

There was a look of genuine surprise on his face. Laura returned to the kitchen, twisted her eyebrows for a moment as she observed the scene, and then began pouring boiling water over a tea bag.

"I can do that," Eames said, still clinging to Goren.

"No," Laura said, "you're going to let me take care of you today."

Eames wiped her eyes. "Thank you."

"But don't get used to it," Laura teased.

Eames let go of Goren, stretched her arms out, and hugged her sister. "This," she explained to Goren, "is what we call a disgusting Eames family hugfest. Very rare occurrence."

Laura handed her sister a mug of tea. Eames slowly walked back over to the couch and sat with Goren, while Laura insisted on staying in the kitchen to throw something together for breakfast. "She feels guilty," Eames whispered. "She thinks because she talked me into having the baby, she's to blame for all of this."

"I got that."

"How'd it go with Colacci last night?"

"We've got him on everything. Which means you have nothing to worry about, because everyone involved is –"

Leaning over, she kissed him lightly on the lips. "I've got two questions for you, one which I want you to be able to answer by the time I go back to work, the other I want you to think about for at least six weeks."

"Are you feeling all right?"

"No, but since for a split second there I thought I was dead, I'm not wasting any more time. First, I want you to tell me if you'd be okay with breaking up our working partnership."

"Altogether?" he asked.

"Because –"

"I know why you're asking, and I think you've had a rough night, Alex."

"Okay. I have had a 'rough night.' But I'm giving you an opportunity here, one I _know_ you want and –"

He took her head between the palms of his hands and pressed his lips to hers, briefly losing his breath as their tongues touched.

"The second question," she said, resting her head on his shoulder, "I'll ask you when we've had time to figure the first one out."


	18. Follow Up

**Ridiculous author's note**: Oh, dear. I just realized that Colacci (our perp) rhymes with Falacci. And someone pointed out to me that the father of Eames' baby has a name very similar name to that of a man charged (I think?) with running a publishing scam, oddly enough a component of my other CI story "Follow My Lead." Well, as a wise woman once said … it's too late now.

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Even though Willem Kreiner was dead and Andrew Colacci had been denied bail while he awaited trial Major Case sent two officers to escort Eames to her obstetrician's for the amniocentesis. Goren held her hand during the procedure.

She agreed to stay with Laura during the forty-eight hours of bedrest ordered by the doctor; Laura took two days off from work in order to take care of the sister who'd always looked out for her.

Back at work a week later, Eames envied the detectives darting in and out of the squad room. Ross had her on desk duty until after the Colacci trial, which probably wouldn't even begin until she returned from maternity leave. He'd paired Goren with Nola Falacci in the interim, and it already looked like the two strong personalities were forming what could turn out to be the beginning of a strong partnership. (Besides, they spoke a dozen languages between them.) Goren and Eames would ask Ross in a few weeks about making the Goren-Falacci partnership more permanent.

Five weeks after their encounter in her living room, they were still trying to answer Eames' first question. Every three or four days, he'd come to her place or she'd come to his, they'd eat dinner, talk for a few hours, sometimes go into the bedroom for a while, and return awkwardly to work the next day. It seemed they had to start over every time; converting a more-than-half-decade-long friendship into a romantic relationship was not an easy task.

Today, he walked over to her desk with his portfolio tucked under his arm and asked if he could talk to her in the interview room. As she stood, she caught him staring with amazement at her now-visible pregnancy.

He shut the door behind him. "I was just downstairs with Rodgers. She says we've got a DNA match between your baby and Kreiner, so all the links in the chain are now taken care of."

"That's not much of a surprise. I had no doubt from the start that the baby was" – she paused briefly, fearing the baby would somehow sense her repulsion – "Kreiner's."

"The trial date's been set for mid-September."

"Oh, good. Maybe while Colacci's being found guilty, I'll be giving birth to his hitman's kid."

"Um, Eames …"

"_Alex_," she corrected, cracking a smile.

"We're at work. It's Eames at work."

She laughed and lightly patted the sleeve of his suit jacket. "What's wrong, Bobby?"

"Nothing's wrong. Rodgers and I were going over the results, and … would you like to know the sex of your baby?"

"You mean you know and I don't?"

"Funny how it works out."

"Okay, boy or girl?"

"A daughter," he said.

She grinned from ear to ear, almost-but-not-quite the same smile from the decade-old pictures he'd seen in her parents' house. "Unbelievable," was all she had to say.

"Eames, I …" He reached out as if to tentatively touch her swollen stomach, but quickly withdrew his hand.

She looked up at him. "Come by for dinner tonight," she said, grasping one of his large hands in both of her small ones and pressing it to her stomach.

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That night, after dinner, she asked him the second question.

She prefaced it with a, "It will not change my feelings for you if you say no." He looked at her with a concerned gaze under which she felt, for a second or two, completely safe.

She squeezed his hand as they sat together on the couch. "I know you won't believe me, Bobby, but I think you'd make a great father."

His voice cracked as he spoke in short, choked-up spurts. "How can you … I've never had a … there's no good model of fatherhood I have to work off of."

She nodded in response to the answer she'd half-expected. "I won't try to talk you into something you don't want to do. I just had to put it out there."

He started to speak, but his face instead contorted itself into a confused, tearful pose that would have been considered a smile if he weren't so upset, wracked by memories of his own father, his own failed family.

"Bobby, I'm sorry, I am."

"What if I … what if I fail you and the baby? How many people have we met who can't get away from their own childhoods after they have children? I …want to, Alex, I want to, but … what good would I be as a parent?"

She threw her arms around his shoulders and played with his hair. "You might need this chance as much as I do," she said, feeling torn to shreds by the tears he was leaving on her shirtsleeve.

"Alex, Alex, Alex," was all he was saying.

"She'd know about her biological father. It's not a secret I want her finding out about all of a sudden when she's an adult. I'll make sure she always knows. But I also want for her to have a good man around who she can call "Dad," and the only man I'd want that to be is you."

He pulled away from her, rubbed his eyes, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. "If this works out," he said, "you know it means you're saving my life again."

She rubbed her hand up and down his back. "Are we keeping score?"

"Eames three, Goren zero." He kissed her lips, then kissed the baby through her mother's blouse, and made a thousand promises.


	19. Epilogue

There's only one picture of them from their wedding day, and they keep it in a drawer filled with receipts and tax documents. In the picture, they're standing in John and Cathy Eames' backyard with dark sunglasses covering their eyes. Eames is wearing a dark, sleeveless sundress, and it's more than obvious that she's in the third trimester of pregnancy. Her lips are parted slightly, as if the person behind the camera had taken her by surprise. Goren, dressed in a short-sleeved blue shirt and black slacks, rests a hand on Eames' bare forearm while he looks to his left, somewhere out of frame.

Over the summer, they'd decided it would be easier for Goren to legally establish himself as the baby's father if they were married. "No fanfare," Eames begged her parents. They went to City Hall on a Tuesday morning in August, were married with Eames' little brother Johnny as the only witness, and then went home.

John Eames called that evening to invite them over for dinner. When they arrived, they found four Eames siblings, spouses and children in tow, waiting for them in the backyard, ready to celebrate.

In September, Andrew Colacci went to trial. McCoy wouldn't let his ADAs deal Colacci down.

Eames sat through all the proceedings. ("Should I sit home and be _afraid_?" she'd asked Goren and Ross.) She and Goren celebrated quietly at home when Colacci was found guilty on all counts; Casey Novak was in the hospital having her second reconstructive surgery when the verdict came in, and it was assumed that DA McCoy preferred to celebrate this victory alone with a bottle of scotch. Goren and Eames did, however, stop by Novak's hospital room to bring her the newspaper and a non-hospital-food meal the day after the verdict came in.

Three days after their visit to Novak, Eames gave birth to a girl they named Laura Frances (Eames' idea, not Goren's).

It's two in the morning on December 26th. A few hours earlier, they were celebrating Christmas with the Eames family. Baby Laura's first Christmas and in a way Bobby Goren's first Christmas, too, they'd said.

Eames wakes up alone in bed and goes across the hall to the baby's room to find Goren cradling his daughter in his arms. She has Willem Kreiner's wide green eyes and otherwise looks like her mother, but she is, and always will be, Goren's daughter.

Mom and Dad will be haunted by occasional nightmares for the rest of their lives, but they've vowed never to let those nightmares get in the way of ensuring that their daughter has the best life they can give her.

Tonight, Eames watches Goren hold the baby and wonders if he believes she's redeemed him – not all the way, never all the way, but somewhat.


End file.
